With this year’s World Cup a painful memory, a dispute between cable providers is standing between outraged cricket fans and the Test match between India and rival Bangladesh.

The three culprits involved in the disagreement include Neo Sports (the channel that owns the telecast rights for the series), DTH operators, and cable operators. Those who bought into the “Direct To Home” craze, bypassing the need for cable operators, cannot even tune into Neo Sports. Furthermore, fans cannot watch the match on the national broadcaster Doordarshan because the channel refused to buy rights for the Test match under the assumption that it wouldn’t sell as much.

This forces many DTH users to watch the match at friends’ houses, and even more cricket fans to tune into the telecast through the Chennai-based, free-to-air network Raj TV, complete with Tamil commentary. This has millions of cricket fans throughout the country livid, and it looks to stay this way for the rest of the Test matches that Neo Sports is set to cover.

As for the broadcasts that many people were unable to access in their homes, which were hindered by rain, the two-match series is currently tied 0-0, with the last match set for Friday.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007 at 11:39 am and is filed under Cricket. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.